


I Reveal My Heart To You And Hope That You Believe It's True (Cause Words Don't Come Easy To Me)

by swampthot



Series: Charbitch Cinematic Universe [1]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Charbitch, First Dates, Fluff, Kinda, M/M, Making Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 22:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14554851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swampthot/pseuds/swampthot
Summary: “I was never any good at making friends as a child,” the scientist says softly after a moment. “And I always thought if I could figure people out it would be like some sort of promise. Like I knew exactly what would happen. I thought if I could understand the mechanics of everything, life would just lay itself out for me. I wouldn’t have to scramble to figure everything out.”It’s Charlie this time who slowly reaches out across the table for the scientist’s hand, with a beating heart. Despite their different upbringings, different cultures, the fact that he does not now and possibly never will know his goddamn name, he feels like the man is speaking directly into his soul, through a thin, tenuous and painful connection.Charlie goes to dinner with the scientist (Burn Gorman) from Flowers For Charlie, and something entirely unexpected begins to blossom.





	I Reveal My Heart To You And Hope That You Believe It's True (Cause Words Don't Come Easy To Me)

Charlie is walking out of the lecture hall, doing his best to force his composure, when he hears the sound of footsteps behind him, somehow echoing over the din of his friends yelling.

He turns, and see the scientist, the British one, walking briskly towards him. “Charlie!” he calls. “Wait a moment, will you please?”

For some reason, Charlie does. “What do you want, dude?” he asks, perplexed. “You guys already said the pill didn’t work, so-”

“Yes,” the man interrupts, smiling in a slightly pained manner. “Well, I would still like to ask you some follow-up questions-”

“I’m a little busy-”

“Next Thursday,” he finishes. He looks at Charlie earnestly, and it kind of catches him off guard. No one really looks him in the eyes like that anymore, due to his, like, lowly status as a janitor (but really the fact that he smells like month-old cheese and paint thinner). “I’ll buy you a nice dinner to make up for inconveniencing you.”

Maybe the eye contact is why Charlie says, “Sure, dude.” As he does so, he sees the scientist’s face brighten just a little.

“Excellent!” he says jovially, clapping his hands. Jeez, if that isn’t the most, like, British thing Charlie’s ever seen. “My research assistant has your address, I believe, and I will- Ah- Swing by promptly at dinnertime. Thank you so much.” He turns away and swiftly walks back towards the open door of the lecture hall, where increasingly loud and angry voices are beginning to be heard.

Charlie stops for a moment and stares in that direction, a little stunned. Partially, he feels the manic rush of energy that for a time had kept him from huffing anything diminishing; and he now realizes that what had been enabling him to keep going for so long was all the sugar in those- pla- sugar pills, whatever Frank had told him about. He feels a little bogged down and tired. Not in the mood for Police Academy.

“Charlie!” he hears from the end of the hall. Wow, he’d been so distracted that he hadn’t noticed the bickering had stopped, but Frank was the only one left, holding the door for him at the end of the hall. “Come on, Charlie, Police Academy!”

Squashing his thoughts-the few I have left, he reasons bitterly-Charlie runs to catch up with him.

 

Charlie ends up passing out through the first ten minutes of Police Academy, as, in addition to not abusing as many substances, he hasn’t been sleeping that much either, and he wakes in Dee’s apartment in the night to the view of a blue screen and his friends in an equally deep slumber.

He blearily stumbles to the kitchen and starts poking through Dee’s pantry, not entirely sure what he was looking for. He finds a few swallows of tequila at the bottom of one of her bottles and- oh, sweet! Cough syrup. That should always make him feel better.

He downs the liquor, and drinks about half of the bottle of cough syrup, and doesn’t even notice anyone behind him until he hears a soft, “Charlie?”

He spins around to face Dee, dropping the bottle of cough syrup with a thud. “Jesus!” he screams. God, it doesn’t help that he’s scared of houses at night anyway-just the wrong combination of quiet and the certainty that someone like his uncle could catch him unaware at any moment-but at this moment, he could strangle her.

“Sorry, Charlie,” she says, blinking at him. “What are you doing?”

He sighs, picking up the cough medicine from the floor. “What does it look like I’m doing, Dee?” He puts it back into the cabinet (the wrong one, on purpose) and hurls the empty glass bottle into the trash can with a thud. “I’m going back to the old shit I do to keep myself busy. I feel sick-” he rummages around in what he knows is Dee’s mini-medicine cabinet, for when she can’t be bothered to go all the way to the bathroom for pills- “I start drinking. I don’t feel sick, I start drinking some cough syrup. God DAMMIT!” He slams the drawer in frustration. “You have almost nothing in here I can get high off of. You bitch.” He’s shaking, but not from the withdrawal. He doesn’t know why.

“I’m a recovering crack addict, Charlie,” she says, remarkably monotonously and calmly. He stares into her eyes, and at the bags under them, and feels himself begin to deflate.

“I’m sorry,” he says lamely, leaning against the countertop. “I-”

She looks at him. He looks at the floor.

“What did that scientist guy want from you?” she asks finally.

“He wanted to, like, talk to me about my experiences,” Charlie said. “He said he’s gonna take me to a restaurant on Thursday.” He was admittedly a little proud of his flawless pronunciation of the word restaurant.

She raises her eyes, but says nothing. “What are you gonna wear?”

“What am I- I don’t know. Probably a shirt with buttons?” His voice squeaks out at the end of his sentence, reflecting his confusion at her question.

“I mean, you have to do a little better than that, Charlie.” She grins teasingly. “You wanna impress this guy, right?”

Charlie is taken a little aback. “Why?”

“‘Cause.” She sits down at the table and rests her forehead in her hands. “What if he needs you for another research position?” He has the feeling she’s not saying exactly what she means, but he’s arrested by her words anyway.

“Shit, yeah. You’re right.” He stumbles from the kitchen back into the living room. “Guess I’d better dress a little nicer.”

 

That’s kind of how he ends up at Guigino’s wearing a new tie and a white shirt, and sweating a good amount. Not as much as the time he had tried to go on that blind date, but enough to make him feel on edge and like, smelly, even though he’d showered at Dee’s. He was early for once, and it was making him nervous. Usually he wasn’t left waiting, usually he was making other people feel on edge. He feels weird.

Then he hears a “Charlie?” behind him. He gets up out of his seat and finds himself looking into the warm brown eyes of the scientist from the lecture hall, and oh, fuck, Charlie hasn’t actually caught his name.

“Hello,” Charlie responds pseudo-enthusiastically, shaking his hand. “Nice to see you again.” He kinda shakily smooths down his tie and is about to pull his own chair out when he notices that the scientist has pulled it out for him. His face goes slightly pink.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and sits. The scientist does likewise.

“So, Charlie.” The man smiles at him politely. “Tell me how you’re feeling after going off those pills.”

Charlie scratches his head. “Well, y’know. I don’t feel as smart as I did. I’m not feeling the side effects anymore.” There’s something underneath what he’s saying as well, that he doesn’t want the scientist to pick up on. He’s been abusing various substances at more or less his normal rate, but he feels more off than usual.

“Have you been sleeping alright?” This question jolts him a little bit, because no, he hasn’t been. In fact, sometimes he wakes up and rolls out of bed to go out into the hall and lay down and pet cats because, even with Frank right next to him, he feels like the silence and the aloneness will suffocate him.

And despite how shitty his life has always been, this is a fairly recent development.

“I mean, mostly,” he says. “Sometimes I’m too busy thinking to sleep, though.”

The scientist tilts his head, his warm brown eyes looking at Charlie perceptively. “Thinking about what?”

Charlie’s voice is thick all of a sudden. “The thing about thinking is,” he fumbles, trying to explain, “I’m not very good at it, man, like.” He swallows. “You guys did the- the literal test with me, remember?”

“The literacy test, Charlie, yes,” he says gently. “We did. But that’s not necessarily an indicator of intelligence.”

Charlie shrugs, and the scientist glances down at his notepad. “How is your diet?”

Charlie flashes back to the grilled Frank he had for breakfast, the, well, nothing he consumed the day before that. “It’s alright,” he says vaguely.

The man jots another note down, and Charlie feels that he is not exactly fooled by his nonchalance.

Throughout the next hour, and the one after that, but then the conversation begins to slide from Charlie’s physical well-being to his mental well-being, and from there to just Charlie himself.

“I do confess,” the scientist says at one point, ears tinged red, “I enjoy Thundergun from time to time. As a guilty pleasure.”

“Dude,” Charlie says earnestly. “Thundergun is the best movie ever made. The camera work? Epic. The stunts? Great. The writing? Awesome. It’s just a fun movie.”

The scientist grins. “Normally, you know, I talk about other things, you know, very stuffy, in front of my colleagues, but it does get so very boring.”

“I think you should just be who you are in front of your friends, man,” Charlie says without thinking. “Y’know?”

The scientist’s eyes bore into him. “Yes, absolutely, Charlie. What about your friends?” This question is decidedly more forward than the rest of his line of questioning.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you, ah, ‘who you are’ in front of your friends?” He forms quotes in the air with his fingers as he says this.

Charlie shifts in his chair. “I mean, yeah, I’m not that complicated, man, I’m just a janitor at a bar.”

He squints. “I thought you were the owner?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, “But they make me- But I like to do the janitor work, yknow, for my bar.” There’s no way he can explain this at all.

The scientist taps his pen on the table. “Maybe, Charlie, they are… Keeping you at a lower station in life than you have the capability to… Inhabit. Do you understand what I mean?”

Charlie nods, because he kind of does. That isn’t exactly the first time he’s heard that, because do-gooders absolutely love to tell poor kids that they can be better or do better or whatever, but he’s never once believed it. The way this man is looking at him right now, though, he might actually consider the possibility.

Charlie draws a laugh out of the man on more than several occasions during their dinner, too, chronicling a particularly ridiculous scheme with the gang or anecdote about Frank, and it isn’t the kind of stunned laughter he generally gets as a reaction to his jokes. It sounds genuine.

“And Frank fucking called in a bomb threat to the theater,” Charlie wheezes through tears of laughter at one point. “From a jail cell.” The scientist starts convulsing with laughter as well, and Charlie feels so proud of his own joke telling ability.

“Charlie,” the man manages through his remnant chuckles, “your life is absolutely mental.” He swipes a tear from his eye. “Good Lord, this was a fun dinner.”

“Yeah,” Charlie says awkwardly. “Yeah, uh, jeez, you must be out of questions to ask me-”

“Well, actually-” the man interrupts.

“And it’s getting late-” Charlie feels frantic almost, to stop this, like, one good thing in its tracks before it sours. Let him remember, like, a fun night, and a beautiful, warm, reverberating chuckle.

“Have dinner with me again,” the scientist says.

Something suddenly clicks in Charlie’s mind. Charlie’s voice is higher than usual when he manages to squeak out, “Like. Like a date?”

The scientist stares for a moment, opens his mouth, closes it, and then says. “Um. Yes.”

Charlie, stunned, barely even aware of what’s happening, says “Alright.”

 

When Charlie stumbles home that night, Frank seems to have waited up for him. He’s sitting on the pullout couch, actually twiddling his thumbs.

“Hey, Frank,” Charlie says nonchalantly, taking off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. “How you doin?”

“Pretty good, Charlie. Wanna play some Nightcrawlers?” he asks, and Charlie freezes.

He likes Nightcrawlers, he really does. But with everything the scientist said about his station in life has him hesitating.

“Not tonight, Frank, I’m a little tired,” he says, crawling onto the bed and holding a pillow close to his chest. Frank frowns.

“You feelin’ okay, Charlie?” he asks gently. And Frank really is being so nice to him right now. But Charlie can’t find it in him at this moment to summon up an ounce of respect or even pity for a sixty-year-old man who wanted him to pretend to crawl around in the night like a worm.

Oh, man, Charlie thought. The science bitches really are in my head.

He pulls the covers up to his chest, still not looking at Frank, and says nothing.

 

The next time Charlie goes on a date with the scientist, the scientist offers to pick him up. And they end up going out to lunch, because Charlie really likes lunch, and he doesn’t like to spend excessive amounts of money on weird bullshit fancy food he doesn’t like. So they go to a cafe for some sandwiches.

The bell above the door tinkles as Charlie pulls open the door for the scientist, and Charlie hears a gasp at the counter.

The waitress is standing behind the cash register, about five feet away from them. There’s luckily only one or two other people in the shop, but still, this is not going to be good.

“Charlie, what the HELL,” she screeches. Charlie sucks in a breath. His ears are turning bright pink. He had no idea she worked here! He had no idea the bitch even had a job at all! He can’t muster the energy to look at the scientist.

“Look,” he says shakily, “I just want a sandwich. I didn’t know you were a waitress here-”

“Oh, bullshit, Charlie,” she hisses. “What do you want from me, huh?”

“Do you know this woman, Charlie?” the scientist asks, as pleasantly as ever albeit very confused, and Charlie wishes the ground would swallow him up.

“Yeah. No. Kinda. Look, let’s leave.” He takes the scientist’s hand, not even realizing what he’s doing, and then stops in his tracks as the shock of the contact zings through his palm.

He looks into the scientist’s warm brown eyes.

The spell is broken by the waitress. “Will you please just leave already?” She folds her arms. “You and your creepy friend.”

Charlie pulls his hand away and walks briskly for the exit, with the scientist almost running to keep up. “Charlie,” he calls. “Charlie, wait a second.” Charlie gets in the passenger seat and buckles his seatbelt.

The man climbs into the drivers’ side, but doesn’t put the key in the ignition. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, gently, and Charlie all of a sudden feels terrible. His fucked up life- He knew it would get in the way soon. Just not as soon as the very first date. He figures, though, that he owes such a nice man an explanation.

“I, like.” He exhales and runs his hand through his hair. “I used to. Really want to be with her.” He bites his lip, trying to gain the courage to say the word out loud. “I kinda went overboard. I just wanted-” He bites his lip. “I just wanted her to love me, y’kno? So I used to come into her work, and put like, vitamins in her shampoo so she’d stay healthy-” The scientist raises his eyebrows. “And I’d follow her home sometimes.”

“Do you do that still, Charlie?” His voice is still just. So polite and inquisitive. Charlie feels as though, if the man keeps being nice to him, he’s gonna start crying.

He shakes his head, proud of this one thing. “I kept building it up so much in my head, man. And thinking about her. But whenever I’d see her, she was never as pretty or as fun as I imagined.”

The scientist nods slowly, then reaches out and, completely out of the blue, takes his hand and squeezes it. “Plato once said, ‘How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain.’” He rubs little circles into the back of Charlie’s hand and Charlie can only sit there in awe. “As you gain one, the other will inevitably follow, so maybe, Charlie, you feel pain remembering these things because you never wanted the chase, for the love of this girl, to actually end, and to feel the pain of pleasure?”

Charlie is so utterly shocked by this. “None of my other friends would probably even think I knew who Plato was.” He looks down at his shoes. “Or quote him to me.”

The man’s smile breaks through his somber mask like, well, in a cliche’d way, like the sun, and he says, “Ah, I think you can keep up.” He removes his hand from Charlie’s and puts the key in the ignition. “Where to? I’m starving.”

 

They end up having lunch at a shitty dive bar and grill, burgers and fries. Charlie likes this a lot better than Guigino’s. He gets to talk loudly over the music to the scientist, instead of trying to suppress his often manic energy.

“I grew up in Pompey,” the scientist tells him. “It’s in England. It’s very big, very chaotic, much like this town. My family lived in a very small flat, and I could only afford uni through scholarships.”

This kind of shocks Charlie; the guy’s accent is so fancy that he would have assumed he came from some kind of asshole snob private school family.

“Dude,” Charlie says suddenly. “Like, what do you even study?” This, like many other things about the scientist, including his fucking name, Charlie really should remember, but here he is.

The scientist’s mouth curves upward. “Neuroscience, Charlie. I have a doctorate.”

“Right.” Charlie shifts in his seat. “Brain stuff.”

There is a brief, awkward lull in the conversation, so Charlie decides to go for broke. “Why do you do it?”

The scientist blinks. “Do what?”

“Study people’s brains.” He could probably make that sentence sound less childish, if he wanted to, but he’s more interested in getting to the point. What the scientist had learned about him so far was so very personal.

“Well,” the man says, looking into the distance thoughtfully. “I’ve always been curious about what makes people the way they are.”

“I think every, like, scientist says that about something,” Charlie says, almost accusatorial. “Why did you become a scientist? Like, forreal. The real reason.” He’s babbling now, for sure.

“I was never any good at making friends as a child,” the scientist says softly after a moment. “And I always thought if I could figure people out it would be like some sort of promise. Like I knew exactly what would happen. I thought if I could understand the mechanics of everything, life would just lay itself out for me. I wouldn’t have to scramble to figure everything out.”

It’s Charlie this time who slowly reaches out across the table for the scientist’s hand, with a beating heart. Despite their different upbringings, different cultures, the fact that he does not now and possibly never will know his goddamn name, he feels like the man is speaking directly into his soul, through a thin, tenuous and painful connection.

“I never know what my friends are saying to me sometimes,” Charlie admits, knowing that the other man just understands he means the gang. He’s still feeling the faint pressure of a hand squeezing around his heart. He always feels things with such intensity, much too fast, and he’s aware that he should probably stop baring his heart to this guy. “I try really hard. But they just care so much about stupid shit like impressing people.”

The scientist’s warm, sincere eyes look into Charlie’s with such compassion Charlie feels as though he may die. “I think you have a simplicity about you, and the way you live your life, Charlie, and I think it makes you one of the most beautiful and interesting people I’ve ever met.” Charlie’s mouth kind of falls open.

They’re still holding hands when they get up to leave, when they walk back to the car, when the scientist drives Charlie home slowly, 15 in a 25. And the man doesn’t just drop Charlie off, he parks the car, walks around to open his door, walks him to his doorstep.

Charlie is feeling so awfully bold, and weirdly floaty, like when he’s had too much paint and his mind is just buzzing around in his skull like a box full of hornets, so he asks the man, “Can I see you again?”

The man smiles, again, the smile breaking all across his face radiantly, like the sun, and says, “What shall we do?”

“We can, uh.” Charlie’s mouth is dry. He hasn’t thought that far ahead. “We can go for a walk.”

“Perfect. That sounds lovely.” The man makes no move to leave yet (Good, Charlie thinks), just keeps looking at him, a smile teasing his lips. “I was going to ask you if I could see you again.” Charlie blushes.

“And then,” he continues, somehow both shyly and exuding an exhilarating confidence, “I was going to ask you if I could kiss you goodbye.”

Charlie’s feet are glued to the floor; he couldn’t possibly move, not if his life depended on it, and he hopes desperately that the scientist understands.

And that’s the thing about this man: despite their limited interactions, he always understands Charlie, what’s bumping around in his brain, what’s keeping him moving, or keeping him standing still. So he swiftly captures Charlie’s jaw in his hands and lightly kisses him, softly but slowly, demonstrating nothing but gentle, romantic intentions, lingering on his lips, moving so sweetly that Charlie regrets how few kisses he’s experienced in his life, and how none of them have ever been like this.

When Charlie has to break away, he does so to gasp for air. He realizes he’s unconsciously grabbed hold of the man’s waist to steady himself.

“And you know,” the scientist continues speaking, eyes still closed, reverently cupping Charlie’s face in his hands, “Afterwards, I was going to press my luck, and ask if I could do it again.” For Charlie, the second kiss is even better than the first, so tender and romantic and yet so slow and thorough, that he think he dies a little bit.

“So I’ll come by on Saturday,” the scientist breathes, almost speaking into Charlie’s mouth, and then squeezes his hand lightly and walks away. Charlie sways for a second and then leans against the doorframe to steady himself.

When he gets inside his apartment, he’s more than a little bemused at the sight that awaits him. Despite never having seen the eighty alley cats he and Frank more or less owned during the day, here they are, or at least a good number of them, being herded by Frank, Dee, Dennis and Mac, most of them with bows or top hats or other bizarre accessories.

“Dude, what the hell?” Charlie asks.

“Cat show, buddy!” Mac yells. Well, he has to yell, to be heard over the din of so many goddamn cats. “It’s like a dog show, but Frank couldn’t get any dogs.” Dennis and Dee, seated on the sofa, are too busy arguing with each other to have noticed Charlie’s arrival, and Frank is attempting to grab one of the nimble cats with his small, stubby arms.

“Did you wash these stray cats, dude?” he asks. Mac shrugs. Standing here, surveying the sight before him, he realizes, for a painful moment, how incompatible his life really is with… well. It’s an absolute disaster. He’s never had a problem with that before, never considered a higher standard of living then sleeping in the same bed as a 4’8” troll man and eating cat food, but now when he thinks about it, he’s beginning to yearn for something beyond this life. Whatever it is he’s yearning for, he doesn’t know, and he only just learned the word “yearning” a couple of days ago, but he still feels like he’s in pain.

The scheme fails like every other scheme always does, but with the one pivotal difference being that Charlie pays it absolutely no heed. He snaps at everyone, even Frank, until they all leave his apartment, and they chalk it up to him having a bad day, and he’s left alone with his thoughts, if they can even be called such.

Charlie sits on the couch and huffs some glue.

 

He hears the doorbell buzz on Saturday, and as he jumps off the couch to get the door, shoes and a jacket already on, Frank says, “Where you goin’, Charlie?”

“I’m still getting money for that research thing,” he lies automatically. “They’re doing something for, like, follow-up.”

Frank shakes his head, looking almost sad. “I miss you, Charlie.”

Charlie freezes. “We see each other every day.”

“Nah, Charlie, come on, you know what I mean.” Frank looks down at his hands. “We haven’t been talkin’ or anything.”

“I- Look, I do, Frank, but I gotta go, okay?” He opens the door. “We’ll talk later, I promise.”

When he exits the complex, the scientist is leaning cooly against the railing of the stairs. Immediately he takes Charlie’s hand, and Charlie can’t hold back a dopey schoolboy grin.

“It’s very sunny today, Charlie,” he beams. “It’s an excellent day for a walk.”

“Oh, good,” Charlie says idiotically.

They walk down the sidewalk in silence for a few moments and then the scientist says, “Is there anywhere in particular you would like to take me?” He has a teasing lilt in his voice, and it’s not a double entendre, exactly, but it does make Charlie shiver slightly.

“Yeah. Actually,” he says slowly, “this might sound stupid.” He can feel his heart hammering again as they swing their joined hands together ever so slightly in time with their steps. “There’s this river I used to go to and throw rocks in when I was a kid.”

“That sounds beautiful, Charlie,” the man says sincerely. They walk, for a moment longer, in silence, until Charlie figures he had better say something to keep the silence from getting awkward.

“So your family’s back in Pompey?” he asks.

“Yes,” the scientist says, looking off into the distance. “My mum and dad and my sister.”

“D’you miss them?” Immediately Charlie hates how blunt the words sound, now that they’ve escaped his mouth.

“Yes and no,” the man answers without hesitating. “Sometimes they were hard to live in close proximity to.”

Charlie’s not certain what the word “proximity” means, but he kind of picks up the meaning of the sentence from context, and he simply asks, “Why?”

The man’s feet slow almost imperceptibly, and he says, “There are certain things I’ve had to keep from them.”

It hits Charlie just then that he must be talking about the gay thing; of course he is, and it also hits Charlie that he himself will too have to address the gay thing, someday. It’s not as if he never considered his sexuality before, but the thing is, he’s so generally isolated from romance that it doesn’t occur to him that the way he experiences sexuality is-

He shakes his head to clear it. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He exhales slowly. “The gang doesn’t know I’ve been.” He briefly has a panic attack over labelling his relationship relative to- the scientist, God damn, his NAME- before settling on saying, “going on dates with a dude.”

The scientist’s mouth quirks up, Charlie assumes at his word choice. “They wouldn’t accept you?”

Ridiculously, Charlie feels tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. “They already know- Well, we all know Mac is gay.” The scientist nods slowly. “And he’s not gonna, like, come out. Cause he hates being gay. But we know. And they mock him all the time.”

The scientist squeezes his hand.

When they reach the edge of the river, Charlie reaches down and picks up a flat little stone, and skips it effortlessly across.

“Mac taught me how to do this when we were kids,” Charlie says brightly. “We used to come down here all the time, just to do this.”

“Alright, Charlie, I have something to confess to you,” the scientist says. Charlie grins and turns to face him.

“What?”

“I can’t skip rocks.”

Charlie snorts, picks up another flat one, and presses it into the man’s palm. He’s still feeling that electric current between them, but less of a zap, and more of a steady tingling. “Were you watching me the first time?”

“Sort of,” the scientist says hesitantly. Charlie rolls his eyes and steps to stand behind him, holding the man’s right hand with his own right hand. “You just throw it like a frisbee.”

He tries it with the scientist a few times, controlling the other man’s arm movements, until finally one rock makes it a whole three skips before sinking pathetically. He spins around to face Charlie with a radiant smile.

“Did you see that?’ he asks excitedly.

Charlie can’t help but grin back. “Yeah, dude. You did great.”

They maintain eye contact for a moment longer, and then Charlie shifts his gaze toward the sky. “It’s so blue up there, dude.”

“Yes, Charlie.” He hesitates. “Like your eyes.”

Charlie holds his breath for a moment, saying nothing, and then a grin splits across his face. “My eyes are green, you dumb fuck.”

The scientist’s deep, mirthful chuckle contrasts well with his own high-pitched giggle, and that’s all they do for a while; they just revel in the absolute ridicule of the moment.

And then they hear a thunderclap.

“Jesus,” Charlie mumbles. “The weather changes so fast.”

“We should probably head back,” the scientist says, gently and yet unwillingly.

“Yeah.”

They trudge back slowly, not holding hands, but brushing them together once in a while by accident. That is, until the few raindrops they felt turned into a full-on downpour, and Charlie, on a whim, grabs the scientist’s hand, and yells, “I know a place to get out of the rain,” and breaks into a sprint, dragging the scientist along with him.

Charlie leads him finally to a tunnel, not one of the ones filled with trash he and Frank would frequent, just a nice normal tunnel. Still panting like his lungs are about to burst, he turns to face the scientist.

After they have caught their breath a bit, the scientist notes, “I see now how wrong I was about your eyes.”

Charlie blushes and covers it up with, “No shit, dude.”

“They’re more. Kelly green.” He smirks. Jesus Christ, he can be really good, Charlie thinks, and sighs. He feels compelled to kiss him, and this time, it’s hotter and heavier, and the scientist backs him up against the wall and crowds him in and alternates slow, deep kisses on his mouth with kisses all the way up and down his neck, his jawline, his beard, and oh, this is so good, Charlie might just die here.

And when the rain eventually stops and they walk back to Charlie’s, Frank is nowhere in sight, so there’s nothing keeping Charlie from inviting the man in. And once he invites the man in, they immediately resume where they had left off. Charlie, gently but firmly, presses the man to sit down on the couch, and climbs into his lap.

They’re both already so far gone they can’t do much more than trade sloppy hand jobs, panting and moaning into each other, but despite the inherent junior-high-eque nature of what they’re sharing, Charlie cums harder than he ever has in his entire life, shaking, begging, and whining, with the scientist not far behind.

 

He starts coming over to the scientist’s hotel room more often than not in the next few weeks, and if the gang was missing his presence before, it was nothing compared to how intensely they did now. They left him messages and he made promises about getting back to them, but for the most part, he just backed out of their plans and left them on the other end. Charlie and the scientist fuck, and they talk about their hopes and their dreams and their fears, and they seem to be so, so very connected in every beautiful moment.

And because he was so truly, deeply happy, his discovery came completely out of the blue.

He was sitting in the lab with the scientist, late at night, after everyone had gone home, and the scientist was reading him a study about rats.

“The test subjects, more often than not, responded positively to the added stimulus of food-” the scientist pauses. “Excuse me for a moment. I don’t think the last page printed.”

Charlie hums nonchalantly, and gets up off the stool. He likes to pace, and he’s been sitting there for way too long, so he pokes around amidst all the piles of paper in the office. He finds one that says something about cancer. One that says something about mice. One that has-

He drops it abruptly.

One that has his name on it.

He picks it up, and with shaking fingers, he looks through the document, searching desperately for symbols he finds familiar. Finding none, head buzzing with anger, he places his head in his hands.

“Charlie,” he hears from the doorway. “Are you alright?”

“What the hell is this, dude?” Charlie manages.

The scientist pales when he sees what Charlie is holding. “Charlie.”

“No. Answer me.” Charlie is shaking with rage, and he crosses the lab to stand right in the scientist’s face, staring up at him in absolute fury. “Y’know what? How about you read that to me.” He points to a paragraph in the middle of the paper, tears blurring out his vision.

Looking absolutely wretched, mournful, even, the scientist does as he’s told. “The s-” he breaks off and looks at Charlie like his heart is being torn in two. “The subject’s fascination with- With a woman who will not reciprocate his-” he swallows. “His affections- Causes him to-”

“Nah, stop.” Charlie’s voice is remarkably calm. “I’ve heard enough.”

“Charlie,” he whispers.

“You used me.” Charlie says. “This whole time, you’ve just been using the private things I told you to write your fucking paper. You told me it was over.”

He doesn’t answer.

With tears in his eyes, voice cracking finally, he says, “I let you see so much of me and you just used it for yourself. Just like everyone else.”

“Please, Charlie-” he steps forward and reaches out, futilely, but as though he already knows what’s coming.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Charlie snarls reflexively, and it shouldn’t hurt him to see the scientist’s reaction, like he’s been kicked. So to counteract the effect, he does what he always does. He leaves.

And he ends up knocking on the door of Mac and Dennis’s apartment. Mac opens the door.

“Charlie,” he says quietly. “What are you doing here?”

Stupidly, at the mere suggestion that his presence yet again is unwanted, tears begin to stream down Charlie’s cheeks.  
“Oh hey, buddy.” Mac is evidently shocked by his display but wastes no time pulling him into his arms anyway. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s gonna be okay,” as Charlie hiccups and sobs against his shirt. He’s thankful that Mac is so tall, that he can press his face into Mac’s chest and not have to look him in the eyes.

Mac, gently, but firmly, with that unyielding solidness he gives to everything he does, manhandles Charlie inside, onto the couch, and keeps him pressed to his chest all the while somehow.

Charlie genuinely can’t stop crying for a few minutes, and Mac begins to run his hands through Charlie’s hair, and whisper, “Shh, shh dude,” and Charlie begins finally to calm down.

Even when his sobs subside, Mac’s hold on him doesn’t yield, and he says, “Look, I dunno what’s going on with you, buddy. But it must be pretty bad.”

Charlie giggles wetly, remembering how much he had missed Mac even when he stumbled through emotional shit with the subtlety of an ox.

“I’m here for you,” Mac finally says, and they fall asleep like that eventually, Charlie resting on top of Mac’s chest, just like when they were kids.

And if Dennis sees them like that the next morning, he has the decency to say nothing at all.

 

Two days later, the doorbell buzzes in Charlie’s apartment, and he opens the door to see the scientist.

“Dude, I don’t-”

“I cancelled the study, Charlie.”

Charlie is floored for a second, but then steels his nerves and says, “And?”

“Just let me explain, please,” the man says. “And then I’ll go.”

Charlie raises one eyebrow.

The scientist runs his hands through his hair shakily. “The time we went to lunch. Yes, I was writing down observations.” Charlie says nothing, willing himself not to lose his cool. “Even though I told you it was just a date.” He exhales shakily. “And I regret that.”

Charlie was planning on giving him a nonchalant shrug, but he feels pinned to the floor by his own uselessness, so he can’t even do that.

“But then,” the man continues. “Charlie. You showed me so much. You showed me that fantastic brain of yours. You showed me who you were and how you lived, and you were so beautiful, and clever, and fascinating, Charlie.” His earnest pleading is making Charlie’s eyes well again, and oh God, he cannot afford that right now.

“And after that first time we had lunch, Charlie, I had stopped writing about you entirely and just started drinking you in. Just being with you. It was so exhilarating, I’ve never-” he runs a hand through his hair. “And I regret misleading you about my intentions, Charlie, I regret that I didn’t come clean about why I asked you on that date, but I was so wrapped up in being with you, I didn’t want it to-” he breaks off and looks at the ground.

Charlie doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He takes the man’s hand and pulls him inside. And he kisses him tenderly, and he whispers, “I forgive you.”

When someone makes a mistake, Charlie always reasoned with himself, you could allow them to learn, or not. Charlie has had enough experience being ostracized for his mistakes. Charlie wants to keep learning with him. To keep becoming better with him.

So Charlie keeps kissing him tenderly, and then, blindly pressing ever closer to him, he blows him on his shitty couch, drinking in his noises and the feel of being entirely wrapped up in him.

 

A week later, the scientist’s visa has expired, and Charlie has understood and made his peace with the impossibility of their situation. A thousand reasons. It wasn’t built to last, the scientist had important work to do, he couldn’t stay in America forever, they weren’t compatible.

Charlie brought his friends with him to see the scientist off. They didn’t know who they were seeing off, exactly, just that he was Charlie’s friend.

Charlie walks with him to the security line, as the gang waits and watches a short distance away, and pulls him into a genuine hug.

“You have no idea what you’ve done for me,” Charlie says simply, because that’s all he can say; he’s never been good with words. Obviously.

The scientist clutches on to him just as fiercely, sighing deeply. “Charlie. You are the most singular occurrence in my entire life. Do you know what that means?”

Choking on a sob, Charlie nods. It’s only been, what, a month? He shouldn’t feel like his heart is splintering right down the middle.

Then Charlie pulls back, and smiles teary-eyed at the scientist. “Do you want to know something funny?”

“Yes, my love,” the scientist says. All the hairs on Charlie’s body stand on end. It’s the first, and probably last time he’s called him that.

“I never learned your name.” The scientist bows his head, and Charlie quickly discerns that he’s shaking with laughter.

“I could tell you right now.” He sighs. “Before I leave.”

Charlie doesn’t answer, trying instead to quell the lump rising in his throat.

“But,” the scientist continues, digging in his pocket and producing a sealed envelope, “I also signed my name on this note for you.”

The size and scope of Charlie’s gratitude to the scientist, not only for leaving Charlie with something to remember him by, but for trusting in him to be able to figure out on his own what it says, is enough to cause the tears welling in Charlie’s eyes to overspill. And as this happens, something else is also happening. He feels his fear of what lies beyond this point; of trying to conquer the world as a changed human being, without this man, finally float away.

He kisses the scientist, hard, tender, and sweet, in front of the airport, in front of his friends, in front of, for all he knows, all of Philadelphia and the entire world.

And when it’s finally time for the scientist to leave, he exits Charlie’s world the way he entered it, with a squeeze of his hand, and a radiant smile, and the most important things they shared unsaid but understood.

And as the scientist proceeds through security and finally out of his view forever, Charlie opens the envelope with shaking hands. There’s a few physical items inside the envelope that he takes note to look at later, but he’s digging for the letter, and with trembling hands he unfolds it and skims all the way to the bottom, where the signature reads-

**Author's Note:**

> thank you sooooo much to the group chat for encouraging me. You guys are so amazing and wonderful, and I hope you like this.


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